FROM FRANCE

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

Written:Written on May 30 (June 12), 1913Published:Published on June 5, 1913 inPravdaNo. 127.

      Printed from thePravdatext.

      Signed:F..Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1971,

      Moscow,Volume 36,

      pages253-255.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Thispaper has already reported the remarkable act of
spinelessness on the part of Gustavo Herve. This smart
journalist and agitator, a man without socialist training
or socialist education, went over (from the ranks of the
professors) to the workers’ party, with all the habits and
practices of a bourgeois intellectual. He began as an
opportunist. Then he swung over to the “extreme Left”, and
for a long time preached semi-anarchist ideas, “terrifying”
the bourgeoisie with noisy outcries in an anti-militarist
spirit.

Latelyhe has tended to turn away from the anarchists
and to make his way back to the party, and towards
recognition of the parliamentary struggle and of educational
and organisational work. But there again, this intellectual
smarty wobbled, and swung back to the opportunists. Being
an impressionist, too much swayed by the last impression
and prone to spineless vacillation, he has been so “scared”
by the present reactionary wave of chauvinism,
nationalism and imperialism in France that he has begun
preaching a return to the “bloc” policy, i.e., an alliance with the
bourgeois Radicals. In order to save the Republic in France
it is essential, he asserts, to have a bloc with the Radicals;
otherwise the reactionaries in France will once again
restore the monarchy or the Empire!

Itis hardly necessary to say that, apart from extreme
opportunists, the French Socialists ridicule the spineless
Herve, and energetically protest against the bloc. Recently
one of the organs of the workers’ party published in theSouth of France carried a number of statements by leading
Socialistsagainst the bloc.

Itis the Socialists who began and are carrying on the
campaign against reaction, these leading workers rightly
say; it is the Socialists who campaigned among the masses
with their protest against the law for a return to three
years’ military service (i.e., a return to the reactionary,
barrack-room and absolutely undemocratic army). It is
the Socialists who are working for aproletarian bloc, i.e.,
the alliance of socialist workers and syndicalist
workers. Among the Radicals and “Radical-Socialists” (a
petty-bourgeois party resembling our Narodniks) only a tiny
section supports this truly democratic campaign of the
Socialists, and then with many waverings.

Whythen have a bloc? Alliance with those who waver
will weaken the pressure of the masses and increase the
vacillation! Meanwhile, the Socialists have never refused
to support the Radicalsto the extentthat they oppose the
reactionaries.

Here,for example, are Messrs. Charles Dumont and
Alfred Masse, true-blue “Radical-Socialists”, writes one
Socialist, whoare backingthe three-year service law in the
expectation of securing a ministerial post. Here is
Clemenceau “himself”, the leader of the Radicals, carrying on
a campaignforthis law. Here is another prominent leader
of the Radicals, Leon Bourgeois, who has also declared
in favour of the law. Lastly, in the Military Commission
of the Chamber of Deputies, the law was adopted by 17
votes to 4, the latterexclusivelysocialist.

Howcan there be a bloc, then, with this shameless
bourgeois party of Radicals and “Radical-Socialists”? Only
by agitatingagainstit among the masses can the French
Socialistsdetachall democratic elements from that party,
therebyobligingsome part of it to go left, towards
democracy. Being completely dependent on the masses at the
elections (since France, of course, has universal suffrage
and parliamentary government), many Radicals will think
again and again before finally votingfora reactionary law
well known to be unpopular among the masses.

Theonly serious support for democracy and the Republic
in France (as everywhere else) is the masses, the massesof workers and with them also the small peasants, and not
the parliamentary politicians, buffoons, careerists and
adventurers of the bourgeois parties, who declare themselves
“Radical-Socialists” one day, only to sell out democracy
and country the next day (for the sake of some ministerial
job or profitable deal, in the form of some concession or
post in a millionaire syndicate, etc.)—(as the French
bourgeois sold France to Bismarck in 1871, out of fear of the
Paris workers’ uprising against wage-slavery).

TheFrench Socialists, who are fighting the idea of a
bloc and are extending their socialist work and agitation
among the masses, deserve the warmest greetings.